What is an engineer, anyway?

And aren’t all writers really just engineers, seen in a different light?

I studied engineering in school. Mechanical engineering, specifically. I went through a 4 year college program and got a bachelor’s of science degree, then I got a job as an engineer. Then I got a totally different job as an engineer, and realized that the word engineer is about as broad as it gets.

In 2025 there are hundreds of types of engineers. Computer engineers, electrical engineers, software engineers, nuclear engineers, chemical engineers, Disney Imagineers… The list goes on. (I’m leaving out the people who drive trains who are also called engineers, not out of lack of respect, but out of extreme jealousy that I can’t get into that profession).

Here’s the mission statement from Stanford’s engineering department:

We seek solutions to important global problems through groundbreaking research, and we educate leaders who will improve the world through the power of engineering principles and systems.

And an excerpt from Georgia Tech’s engineering department:

We lead in defining and solving the most complex problems facing our world, today and tomorrow.

And from Vanderbilt:

The school prepares students to become leaders and innovators in industry, government, and academia – dedicating their skills to solve complex and challenging problems, and make deep and lasting societal impact.

These are lofty ideals. By these metrics engineers basically look for solutions to problems, when you boil it all down. I think that’s a pretty solid definition, and it’s a great starting point. The dictionary definition of “engineering” also adds context about working with “engines, machines, or structures,” which is also great but a little bit limiting when trying to apply the term to fiction.

Because in many ways, writing fiction does fit this definition of an engineer. Stories have structures, writing a story is certainly a challenging and complex problem, and if we over-romanticize the job of the author a bit they can also make deep and lasting societal impact. A story is kind of just a big machine with parts that need to be designed, built, and assembled. So why not call the process of building one “engineering?”

There’s also a little bit of nuance I’d add to this high-level idea of what an engineer actually is. Engineers don’t just solve problems; they do so using a broad set of background principles, and applying them selectively to the problem at hand. Engineering can be seen as applied physics, the practical equivalent of figuring out how the universe works. That’s another great parallel to writing; whether you’re talking about the real universe, your fictional universe, or any subset of the two, writing fiction is very much an exercise in applying theoretical principles (character, rules of the world, story structure, even the language you’re writing in) to create something practical.

The world of software engineering is a great example of co-opting the term “engineer” in a logical way. There are no traditional structures, machines, or whatever else in software. But there are great parallels – the process of designing, assembling, testing, and improving software is identical to the process of designing, assembling, testing, and improving a bridge or a car engine, when you zoom out enough. Software engineering is engineering, and despite the fact that they have co-opted other terms that annoy me a little bit more (calling software production “manufacturing”, for example, confounds my job searches on a regular basis), I think the term engineer is used correctly here.

So when I talk about fiction engineering, this is what I’m really trying to say. Engineering, the way I’m going to use the term, isn’t a degree or a knowledge of engines, machines, structures, computers, software, or anything else. It’s the process of identifying a problem, designing a solution based on your theoretical knowledge, building the solution, testing it, and improving it. These are all things a good author has to do to their story.

It’s the mentality of engineering that I will refer to about a million times in this blog. So even when we’re getting into the ways that a magic system fits together or a soft scifi book glosses over the finer aspects of the technology of its world, just remember that the world might call us writers, but we’re all engineers, too.

Cheers,

Perrin